The improvements in spring barleys have surpassed all the improvements of the other cultivars tho. Is this because there is more time and money put into it due to malting etc or is it the lower disease issues have allowed it push in rather than say winter wheat where septoria messes up the 6 tonners very quickly. ?They get well north of the 6 every year in Wexford according to Twitter.
There’s certainly a view that wheat yields have stagnated across Europe.
I’d say there’s more money going into wheat breeding than spring barley breeding.
I doubt if there’s a single reason why wheat yields aren’t rising as quickly as we would like. I don’t know for sure what all the reasons are but in the case of Ireland, Septoria would certainly be a big factor.
In many situations, wheat crops receive an awful dose of herbicide for Blackgrass/Brome etc.
I don’t even like the likes of Alister for this reason.
I attended an agronomy course in Cambridge during the week. The lecturer was an agronomist from Shropshire. They have Blackgrass as you’d expect and now resistant Italian ryegrass is becoming a more serious issue. He was suggesting a “stack” of herbicide actives to tackle the grass. I’ve no doubt that this level of herbicide will hit the yield of the wheat. 4tn/ac was the go of it for them, they weren’t using enough nitrogen either.
Years ago, wheat could be sown earlier and grass weeds and Septoria weren’t so difficult to control. This gave great establishment and I’m sure full fields and big well developed root systems gave a lot of yield.
If I had to pick the biggest yield constraint in winter wheat on our farm over the years, establishment would certainly be it.
The same agronomist was discussing WOSR also. Going back the years, 5tn/ha was a regular enough occurrence in his region but 4tn/ha is now more like it. I asked him why the yield had come back so much. He said Clubroot was a common problem from tight rotations. Flea beetle was an issue too.
5tn back to 4tn is a 20% drop. It’s actually more because the yield potential of the WOSR varieties has been rising at the same time….
He wasn’t a fan of “regen ag”; I liked him.